“Oh?” He had shuddered almost visibly. God, let it be for some charity organization. Please. “For whom?”

“I want to work for a newspaper, and study journalism at night.” There was a look of fierce defiance in her eyes. She knew what he would say. And why.

“I think you’d be a good deal wiser to take the course at Columbia, get your master’s, and then think about working. Do it sensibly.”

“And after I get my master’s, what sort of newspaper would you suggest, Edward? Women’s Wear Daily maybe?” He thought he saw tears of anger and frustration in her eyes. Lord, she was going to be difficult again. She grew more stubborn each year. She was just like her father.

“What sort of paper were you considering, Kezia? The Village Voice or the Berkeley Barb?”

“No. The New York Times.” At least the girl had style. She had never lacked that.

“I heartily agree, my dear, I think it’s a marvelous idea. But if that’s what you have in mind, I think you’d be far wiser to attend Columbia, get your master’s, and….” She cut him off, rising from the arm of the chair where she’d perched, and glared at him angrily across his desk.

“And marry some terribly ‘nice’ boy in the business school. Right?”

“Not unless that’s what you want to do.” Tedious, tedious, tedious. And dangerous. She was that too. Like her mother.

“Well, that’s not what I want to do.” She had stalked out of his office then, and he found out later that she already had the job at the Times. She kept it for exactly three and a half weeks.

It all happened precisely as he had feared it would. As one of the fifty wealthiest women in the world, she became the puppy of the paparazzi again. Every day in some newspaper, there was a mention or a photograph or a blurb or a quote or a joke. Other papers sent their society reporters over to catch glimpses of her. Women’s Wear had a field day. It was a continuation of the nightmare that had shadowed her: the fourteenth-birthday party broken into by photographers. The evening at the opera with Edward, over the Christmas holidays when she was only fifteen, which they had turned into such a horror. A pigsty of suggestion about Edward and Kezia. After that he had not taken her out publicly for years… and for years after that, there were the photographs of her that were repressed, and those that were not. The dates she was afraid to have, and then had and regretted, until at seventeen she had feared notoriety more than anything. At eighteen she had hated it. Hated the seclusion it forced on her, the caution she had to exercise, the constant secretiveness and discretion. It was absurd and unhealthy for a girl her age, but there was nothing Edward could do to lighten the burden for her. She had a tradition to live up to, and a difficult one. It was impossible for the daughter of Lady Liane Holmes-Aubrey Saint Martin and Keenan Saint Martin to go ignored. Kezia was “worth a tidy sum,” in common parlance, and she was beautiful. She was young, she was interesting. And she made news. There was no way to avoid that, however much Kezia wanted to pretend she could change that. She couldn’t. She never would. At least that was what Edward had thought. But he was surprised at her skill at avoiding photographers when she wanted to (now he even took her to the opera again) and the marvelous way she had of putting down reporters, with a wide dazzling smile and a word or two that made them wonder if she was laughing at them or with them, or about to call the police. She had that about her. Something threatening, the raw edge of power. But she had something gentle too. It was that that baffled everyone. She was a peculiar combination of her parents.

Kezia had the satiny delicacy of her mother and the sheer strength of her father. The two had always been an unusual couple. A surprising couple. And Kezia was like both of them, although more like her father. Edward saw it constantly. But what frightened him was the resemblance to Liane. Hundreds of years of British tradition, a maternal great-grandfather who was a duke-although her paternal grandfather had only been an earl-but Liane had such breeding, such style, such elegance of spirit. Such stature. Edward had fallen head over heels in love with her right from the first. And she had never known. Never. Edward knew that he couldn’t … couldn’t … but she had done something so much worse. Madness … blackmail … nightmare. At least they had averted a public scandal. No one had known. Except her husband, and Edward … and … him. Edward had never understood it. What had she seen in the boy? He was so much less a man than Keenan. And so … so coarse. Crude almost. She had made a poor choice. A very poor choice. Liane had taken Kezia’s French tutor as her lover. It was almost grotesque, except that it was so costly. In the end, it had cost Liane her life. And it had cost Keenan thousands to keep it quiet.

Keenan had had the young man “removed” from the household, and deported to France. After that it took Liane less than a year to drown herself in cognac and champagne, and, secretly, pills. She had paid a high price for her betrayal. Keenan died ten months later in an accident. There had been no doubt it was an accident, but such a waste. More waste. Keenan hadn’t given a damn about anything after Liane died, and Edward had always suspected that he had just let it happen, just let the Mercedes slide along the barrier, let it careen into the oncoming highway traffic. He had probably been drunk, or maybe only very tired. Not really a suicide, just the end.

No, Keenan hadn’t cared about anything in those last months, not even, really, about his daughter. He had said as much to Edward, but only to Edward. Everyone’s confidant, Edward. Liane had even told him her ugly stories, over tea one day, and he had nodded sagely and prayed not to get sick in her drawing room. She had looked at him so mournfully, it had made him want to cry.

Edward always cared. He cared too much-for Liane, who had been too perfect to be touched (or so he had thought) and for her child. Edward had always wondered if it excited her to have someone so far from her own class, or maybe it was just that the man was young, or maybe because he was French.

At least he could protect Kezia from that kind of madness, and he had long ago promised himself that he would. She was his duty now, his responsibility, and he was going to see to it that she lived up to every ounce of her breeding. He had sworn to himself that there would be no disasters in Kezia’s life, no blackmailing, boy-faced French tutors. With Kezia it would be different. She would live up to her noble ancestry on her mother’s side and to the powerful people on her father’s side. Edward felt he owed that much to Keenan and Liane. And to Kezia, as well. And he knew what it would take. How he would have to inculcate her with a sense of duty, a sense of the mantle of tradition she wore. As she grew up, Kezia had jokingly referred to it as her hair shirt, but she understood. Edward always saw to it that she did. That was the one thing he could give her objectively, he thought: a sense of who and what she was. She was Kezia Saint Martin. The Honorable Kezia Holmes-Aubrey Saint Martin, offspring of British nobility and American aristocracy, with a father who had used millions to make millions, in steel, copper, rubber, petroleum, and oil. When there was big money to be made on unthinkable scales, Keenan Saint Martin was there. It had made him an international legend, and a kind of American prince. His was the legend Kezia had inherited with the fortune. Of course, by some standards Keenan had had to get his hands a little bit dirty, but not very. He was always so spectacular, and such a gentleman, the kind of man whom people forgave anything, even the fact that he made much of his own money.

Liane, on the other hand, was Kezia’s threat, her terror … her reminder that if she crossed the invisible boundaries into forbidden lands, she, like her mother, would die. Edward wanted her to be more like her father. It was so much less painful for him that way. But so often … too often … she was the image of Liane, only stronger, and better, smarter, and so much more beautiful even than Liane.

Kezia was born of extraordinary people. She was the last surviving link in a long chain of almost mythical beauty and grace. And it was up to Edward now to see that the chain was not broken. Liane had threatened it. But the chain was still safe, and Edward, like all lonely people who never quite dare, who are never quite beautiful, who are never quite strong-was impressed by it. His own modestly elegant family in Philadelphia was so much less impressive than these magical people to whom he had given his soul. He was their guardian now. The keeper of the Holy Grail: Kezia. The treasure. His treasure. Which was why he had been so glad when her plan to work at the Times had failed so dismally. Everything would be peaceful again. For a while. She was his to protect, and he was hers to command. She did not yet command him, but he feared that one day she would. Just as her parents had. He had been trusted and commanded, never loved.

In the case of the Times, he had not had to command. She had quit. She had gone back to school for a while, fled to Europe for the summer, but in the fall, everything had changed again. Mostly Kezia. For Edward it had been almost terrifying.

She had returned to New York with something crisper about her manner, something more womanly. This time she didn’t consult Edward, even after the fact, and she didn’t make claims to being grown-up. At twenty-two she had sold the co-op on Park Avenue where she had lived with Mrs. Townsend-Totie-for thirteen very comfortable years, and rented two smaller apartments, one for herself, and the other for Totie, who was gently but firmly put out to pasture, despite Edward’s protests and Totie’s tears. Then she had gone about solving the problem of a job as resolutely as she had the matter of the apartment. The solution she chose was astonishingly ingenious.